The February 6 and 8 editions of the Daily Hampshire Gazette devote long articles to the cases of Jane’s Spa, Hadley Massage Therapy, Chinese Massage and several other area establishments “busted and shut down for prostitution” in late 2009. Two of these articles are cited below. Now if only the Gazette would train its scrutiny on its sister publication down the hall. The ads to the right appear in the February 4 issue of the Valley Advocate.

“They maintain control over these people that way, because they are indebted to them for these charges.”

Inspector John Burke of the Albany, N.Y., County Sheriff’s Department – who delivered the information on the Hadley massage parlors – said he’s seen illegal immigrants who are prostitutes get strung along, with the key to freedom forever out of reach.

Said Foucart: “Sometimes it takes law enforcement such as ICE to free them, and to get them away from these organizations and put them into the proper nongovernment (programs) that’ll be able to help them, with clothing and with food and shelter. Generally, a lot of times it takes law enforcement intervention to have that occur.”

“What we’ve learned from other jurisdictions is that typically those types of operations are used to generate income, that they are a moneymaking operation to fund other activities,” said Cahillane.

The typical transaction includes $40 to $60 up front for a massage, with another $40 to $60 negotiated for the so-called “happy ending, home run or release,” according to law enforcement officials…

Unlike human smuggling, in which immigrants pay their way to cross a border illegally, victims of human trafficking cannot pay, or are kidnapped, and end up forced into slavery or prostitution.

“Every time I’ve seen it, it’s been pretty crappy. A lot of times, they were in a basement. They would just put up a sheet and put a mattress on the floor, and they would just work on and off, on and off, on and off,” Burke said.

Burke said that, while the women took in substantial sums, they themselves never had any.

Sweden’s Prostitution Solution: Why Hasn’t Anyone Tried This Before?Sweden’s law enforcement community has found that the prostitution legislation benefits them in dealing with all sex crimes, particularly in enabling them to virtually wipe out the element of organized crime that plagues other countries where prostitution has been legalized or regulated.

Letter to Gazette: “Urges Valley Advocate to stop running escort ads” (11/7/09)The Gazette writes of past suffering in its Oct. 26 editorial, “Slavery’s unfinished story,” but you can find present-day exploitation in the Gazette’s sister publication – the Valley Advocate – and its massage/escort advertising section. Many of these ads appear to involve prostitution…

As reported by the Chicago Tribune in April 2008, a comprehensive 2004 mortality study, conducted by the American Journal of Epidemiology, shows that workplace homicide rates for women working in prostitution are 51 times that of the next most dangerous occupation for women (which is working in a liquor store) and the average age of death of the women studied was 34.

In one study, 75 percent of women in escort prostitution had attempted suicide and prostituted women comprised 15 percent of all completed suicides reported by hospitals…

[NOW-NYC] has been asking other local media to stop taking the salacious ads and said it has won agreements to do so from 14 other publications including Time Out New York and New York Press…

“Trafficking exists because there aren’t enough women to do this assembly line brothel work,” the president of NOW’s New York City chapter, Sonia Ossorio, said. While no one knows exactly how many women are prostituted against their will, it is indisputable that some come to New York with promises of legitimate jobs only to find these don’t exist and there’s only one way to pay off their debts.

Pasadena Weekly: “Lives for sale”“They’re always a point of concern,” Pasadena Police Chief Bernard Melekian told the newspaper. “We follow up on them fairly regularly. I have always been surprised that the [Pasadena] Weekly underwrites the exploitation of women to some degree.”

…“Asian Lovers: Best Young Girls in Town,” “Asian Girl: Pretty Apples,” “Grand Opening, Young Asian Cuties,” read several ads that appeared recently in the Weekly…

Ivy Suriyopaf, an attorney with the Asian-American Defense League, said that if an ad is suspicious, newspapers shouldn’t run it.

“Publications have a choice about whether to run certain ads,” said Suriyopaf. “If they have any reason to believe that businesses are conducting illicit activities, they have a social responsibility to report it to the authorities or, at the very least, not run the business’ advertisements.”

Valley Advocate: “Erotica: Eden’s Dark Side” (9/28/06)The mafia and its business associates understand the First Amendment, and they know how to push liberals’ buttons. They’ve done it before in this area with dismaying success, recruiting liberal lawyers to help keep notorious Springfield mobster Al Bruno out of jail in the early ’90s, to mention one example…

It’s a far cry from D.H. Lawrence, from gentle line drawings of women making love with women, to a store front that sets a porn mogul with a history of mafia ties up in the middle of Northampton’s Rte. 5 business district. It would be an irony, and not a happy one, for the more elevated arguments in favor of porn to shield the underside of the industry as it would touch down in Northampton, possibly drawing profits to interests quite at odds with the character of this community.

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NoPornNorthampton aims to increase awareness about the impact of porn on people and communities. We support the reasonable regulation of sexually oriented businesses in Northampton, Massachusetts and elsewhere. We ask businesspeople to balance profits with compassion. We do not advocate increasing government censorship of porn. For our positive vision of sexuality, visit GreenSexuality.com.